Francis G. Newlands

Francis G. Newlands
United States Senator from Nevada
In office March 4, 1903 – December 24, 1917
Preceded by	John P. Jones
Succeeded by	Charles B. Henderson
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Nevada's At-Large district
In office March 4, 1893 – March 3, 1903
Preceded by	Horace F. Bartine
Succeeded by	Clarence D. Van Duzer
Personal details
Born	Francis Griffith Newlands (1846-08-28)August 28, 1846 Natchez, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	December 24, 1917(1917-12-24) (aged 71) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Silver (1893–1903) Democratic (1903–1917)
Spouse(s)	Clara Adelaide Sharon, died birthing 4th child in 1882. Second wife: Edith McCallister married 1888
Profession	Attorney, Politician
Signature

Francis Griffith Newlands (August 28, 1846 – December 24, 1917) was a United States Representative and Senator from Nevada and a member of the Democratic Party.^[1]

A supporter of westward expansion, he helped pass the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which created the Bureau of Reclamation and boosted the agricultural industry by building dams to support irrigation in the arid Western states.^[2] An avowed white supremacist,^[3][4][5] Senator Newlands argued publicly for racial restrictions on immigration and repealing the 15th Amendment.^[2][6][7]

Newlands also founded the neighborhoods of Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C.; and Chevy Chase, Maryland,^[8] both with covenants that aimed to prevent non-white people from moving there.^[9]

Early life[]

Newlands was born in Natchez, Mississippi, on August 28, 1846 (or 1848; sources differ). He was the fourth of five children born to Jessie and James Newlands, immigrants from Scotland.^[7][10][11] His father, trained as a physician in Edinburgh, died in 1851.^[7] Newlands was raised in Illinois and Washington, D.C.^[10]

In 1867, he went to Yale University but left after his first year.^[12] In 1869, he graduated from Columbian College, which is now George Washington University Law School,^[13] and was admitted to the bar in 1869.^[7][14] In 1901, he received an honorary M.A. degree.^[13]

Career[]

In 1870, Newlands moved to San Francisco, California. He married Clara Adelaide Sharon, the daughter of future Nevada senator William Sharon, in 1874.^[7][11] They had three daughters.^[10] Newlands helped William Sharon to reopen the Bank of California, and supervised the management of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco.^[7] When Newlands’ wife died, he inherited the Sharon estate.^[10] Newlands married Edith McAllister and moved to Nevada in 1888.^[15]

Land developer[]

In the late 1880s, Newlands and his partners began to acquire farmland in northwestern Washington, D.C., and southern Montgomery County, Maryland, in order to develop a residential streetcar suburb for the nation's capital. On June 23, 1888, Newlands chartered the Rock Creek Railway for a single-track streetcar.^[16] Two years later, Newlands and his partners purchased more than 1,700 acres and formed the Chevy Chase Land Company.^[17][18] Between 1890 and 1892, the Land Company built two bridges, constructed five miles of road, and laid streetcar tracks along the road.^[17] The Rock Creek Railway opened in 1892.^[18] To supply the electricity to the streetcars, the company dammed Coquelin Run, a small tributary of Rock Creek, just east of Connecticut Avenue; the resulting Chevy Chase Lake supplied water for an electric generating plant. From 1894 to 1936, the Land Company operated an amusement park on the lake as a means to draw prospective buyers to the development and to keep the streetcars supplied with evening and weekend passengers.^[19]

Newlands created the Chevy Chase Springs Hotel (later the Chevy Chase School for Girls, now the 4-H Youth Conference Center). Newlands ensured the community included schools, churches, country clubs, tree-lined streets, a water supply and a sewage system. Groceries and daily purchases were brought from Washington, D.C., on the railway at no charge to residents.^[18]

In 1893, Newlands began to subdivide some property he inherited in Burlingame, California. He started with the Burlingame Country Club and five cottages. The following year, he added the Burlingame train station.^[20][21]

U.S. Representative[]

Newlands represented Nevada in the United States House of Representatives from 1893 to 1903 as a member of the Silver Party. In 1898, he created the Newlands Resolution, which annexed the Republic of Hawaii, creating a new territory.^[10] He supported a greater federal role in conservation and pushed for federal funding of western arid land irrigation projects.^[10][22] He helped pass the Reclamation Act of 1902, also called the Newlands Act, which created what would become the Bureau of Reclamation.^[10]

U.S. Senator[]

Newlands as a U.S. Senator, c. 1914

Newlands entered the United States Senate in 1903 as a Democrat. He supported the protection of the National Forests under the United States Forest Service in 1905, and the creation of the National Park Service in 1916.^[10] He was a member of the Senate subcommittee that investigated the 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic.^[23] In 1916, he was the only Democratic senator to vote against the nomination of Louis Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court.^[24]

Newlands held white supremacist beliefs and spoke publicly in favor of restricting the rights of African-Americans.^[6][25][26]

He served until his death in Washington, D.C., on December 24, 1917. He died of heart failure in his home.^[27]

Legacy[]

The Francis Griffith Newlands Memorial Fountain is in Chevy Chase Circle, a federal park that divides D.C. and Maryland. In 2014, a member of the Chevy Chase advisory neighborhood commission proposed a resolution calling for the removal of Newlands’ name from the fountain because of his white supremacist views on race, including his desire to remove the vote for African-Americans. Others believe that Chevy Chase should not alter the monument because the change would belittle Newlands' legislative accomplishments.^[28][29]

Newlands' former mansion in Reno is one of six properties in Nevada designated as a National Historic Landmark.^[30] Many notable people, including Barbara Hutton in 1935, stayed at the house while waiting for their divorce paperwork to be finalized by George Thatcher, a local divorce lawyer who purchased the home in 1920.

Racial views[]

Newlands was an outspoken white supremacist who advocated for those beliefs as a senator. In a 1909 journal article titled "A Western View of the Race Question" published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Newlands wrote that Black people were “a race of children.”^[6][31] He went on to argue that black people posed a threat to the country, "It (the country) should start immediately upon the serious consideration of a national policy regarding the people of the black race now within our boundaries, which, with a proper regard for humanity, will minimize the danger which they constitute to our institutions and our civilizations."^[6] In the piece, he also expressed fear that people from Asia would immigrate into the country and take over the West Coast: "Asia, with nearly a billion people of the yellow and brown races, who, if there were no restrictions, would quickly settle upon and take possession of our entire western coast and intermountain region."^[6] He continues to describe Chinese and Japanese people using stereotypes saying, "the Chinese, who are patient and submissive, would not create as many complications as the presence of the Japanese, whose strong and virile qualities would constitute an additional element of difficulty."^[6] He was also a white nationalist who sought to secure the United States as a homeland for whites. In 1905, he advocated for the paid resettlement of African Americans to the Caribbean.^[32] In an article written in the New York Times on June 17, 1912, Newlands wrote, “I believe this should be a white man’s country and that we should frankly express our determination that it shall be.”^[33] During the 1912 Democratic National Convention, he proposed for the Democratic Convention platform a “White Plank" that would advocate for repeal the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution and restrict of immigration to whites.^[34]

The covenants attached by Newlands' development companies to lots in Chevy Chase, D.C.; Chevy Chase, Maryland; and Burlingame, California did not explicitly forbid their sale to people of specific races or religions. Instead they forbade buyers to build homes that cost less than certain amounts — e.g., $3,000 and $5,000 — effectively preventing their sale to members of minority populations with less access to wealth.^[35]

On July 27, 2020, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission of Chevy Chase, D.C., voted unanimously to ask the National Park Service (NPS) to remove the plaque bearing his name from the Francis Griffith Newlands Memorial Fountain and create an exhibit documenting Newlands's racism.^[36] A similar renaming effort has begun around Newlands Park in Reno, Nevada.^[37][38]

See also[]

• National Irrigation Congress
• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–49)

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francis G. Newlands.

• Francis Griffith Newlands papers MS 371 Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

• United States Congress. "Francis G. Newlands (id: N000069)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Francis G. Newlands, late a senator from Nevada, Memorial addresses delivered in the House of Representatives and Senate frontispiece 1920